yah ya ibn adi on the location of god w

Yah: ya Ibn Ad on the Location of God

Peter Adamson and Robert Wisnovsky

Aristotles Physics says some puzzling things about God. One of the oddestis found in the last chapter of the last book.1 Here Aristotle raises andanswers the question of the location of the Prime Mover, writing:

Physics VIII.10, 267b69: [The mover] must be either in the center (K ) or inthe circle (K ). For they are the principles ( I). But what is closest tothe mover moves fastest, and such is the motion of the circle. Therefore the mover isthere (KE e F).

This passage occasioned a good deal of comment already in antiquity, as weshall see. In the present paper, we will be presenting a brief Arabic text thatbuilds on the ancient debate. It is found in a Tehran codex, Madrasa-yiMarw 19, which contains among other things, 53 works by the Christianphilosopher Yah: ya ibn Ad (d. 363/974), a student of al-Farab who seemsto have been for a while the most significant member of the Aristotelianschool in Baghdad.2 Of these 53 works, no fewer than 24 were previouslythought lost. The contents of these lost treatises have already beendescribed elsewhere,3 and several of the newly discovered treatises have

1 We are very grateful to Marwan Rashed, Fouad Ben Ahmed, and an anonymousreferee for comments on the treatise and our interpretation of it. Peter Adamson wouldalso like to acknowledge the support of the Leverhulme Trust and the assistance of DavidBennett and Rotraud Hansberger, and Robert Wisnovsky would like to thank Ahme-dreza Rahimiriseh and Reza Pourjavady for providing images of the Marw codex, andNaser Dumairieh for his help with the Arabic text.

2 Al-Masud for instance identifies Ibn Ad as the outstanding instructor ofphilosophy in his day. See his Kitab al-tanbh wa-l-is:raf, ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden:Brill, 18934), 122.

3 Robert Wisnovsky, New Philosophical Texts of Yah: ya Ibn Ad: A Supplement toEndress Analytical Inventory, in F. Opwis and D. Reisman (eds.), Islamic Philosophy,Science, Culture, and Religion: Studies in Honor of Dimitri Gutas (Leiden: Brill, 2012),30726. Cf. the fundamental study by G. Endress, The Works of Yah: ya ibn Ad: AnAnalytical Inventory (Wiesbaden: L. Reichert, 1977).

already been presented in greater detail.4 Below, we provide an analysis,translation, and edition for a short piece in which Ibn Ad asks, alluding tothe passage of Aristotle cited above, what is the meaning of Aristotlesassertion, in Book Eight of the Physics, that the mover is in the containing[sphere] (al-muh: arrik f-l-muh: t:)? (} 1).5

We will see that Ibn Ad takes a rather deflationary view of the meaningof Gods being in the sphere, one that avoids ascribing a specific locationto God. This is in contrast to the views of Eudemus and Alexander, whoactually assigned the Prime Mover a specific location (either the celestialequator or the surface of the sphere itself ). Ibn Ads position is in thisrespect like that of Neoplatonist authors, who reject the idea of a literallocation; here Simplicius is a good example, since he dismisses the very ideaas inappropriate to the exalted status of immaterial causes. Ibn Ads ownview is that God is in the sphere only in the non-spatial sense that anintelligible object is in an intellect. This is not prefigured in the Greekcommentaries on our passage, which is all the more striking given that IbnAd apparently knew those discussions.

1 . THE ANCIENT CONTEXT

Physics VIII.10 is not the only Aristotelian passage to raise the question ofGods location. In De Caelo I.9 Aristotle writes: Clearly there is neitherplace, void, nor time outside [the heaven], so that things there are by theirnature not in place ( h K IE ) (279a1718).This is, if anything, even more puzzling than our Physics passage. Aristotleseems to recognize the existence of things with location outside theheavenafter all, they are outside () and as at Physics VIII.10,Aristotle uses the word there (KE). Yet in the same breath, he also deniesthat they are in placewhich stands to reason, since for Aristotle place

4 Robert Wisnovsky, Yah: ya ibn Ads Discussion of the Prolegomena to the Studyof a Philosophical Text, in M. Cook et al. (eds.), Law and Tradition in Classical IslamicThought (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 17185; Stephen Menn and RobertWisnovsky, Yah: ya ibn Ads Essay on the Four Scientific Questions regarding the ThreeCategories of Existence: Divine, Natural and Logical. Editio princeps and English Transla-tion, with Historical-Philosophical Notes, Melanges de lInstitut dominicain detudesorientales du Caire (MIDEO) 29 (2012) 7396.

5 Cited by section number from our translation and text. The treatise in question isnumbered 2.21 in Endress 1977, and is number 41 in the listing found in the introduc-tion to Sah: ban Khalfat, Maqalat Yah: ya ibn Ad al-falsafiyya (Amman: al-Jamia al-Urdunniyya, 1988).

206 Peter Adamson and Robert Wisnovsky

means the inner boundary of a containing body, and these entities have nocontaining bodies. Is it possible, then, to have a location without having aplace? James Wilberding has recently explored Plotinuss similar claimthat immaterial principles can have special locations in the universeassigned to them.6 In the case of Plotinus, nous is likewise associatedwith the heaven, something Wilberding explains in terms of the heavenlybodys high degree of receptivity for the influence of nous. One could seethis as a deflationary account of location: the immaterial cause is not reallyin the heaven, but merely exercises its influence more at some placesthan others.

By contrast, several ancient Peripatetics adopted a stronger interpretationof Aristotles location locutions. This becomes clear from Simpliciusscommentary on the Physics,7 which has recently been supplemented byMarwan Rasheds magisterial presentation of Byzantine scholia containingthe comments of Alexander of Aphrodisias.8 We learn from Simplicius thatEudemus took quite seriously the reference to a circle in Aristotles text,and identified the location of the Prime Mover as the greatest circle relativeto the poles, i.e. the celestial equator, for it moves most quickly, and themover seems to act as a principle where it moves most quickly and easily(1354.1012). Eudemuss interpretation is not implausible, for the veryreason he himself gives: Aristotle says in our passage that the mover shouldbe located at the place with the fastest motion. In Aristotelian cosmologythe outermost sphere of fixed stars has the fastest motion, since it rotatesaround the earth once a day. And of course the speed of rotation for anypart of that sphere is faster as one moves away from its poles and towards itsequator, with the fastest speed at the equator itself.

Against this, Alexander argued that Eudemus would violate the centralclaim that the Prime Mover is itself unmoved. For, Alexander writes, if[the mover] were in some part of the outer circumference, it would bemoved accidentally, given that the motion occurs through the parts of thesphere (1354.1719). Alexander prefers to hold that by circle Aristotlemeans the surface of the entire sphere and not only the equator. This hasthe advantage that in a sense, the heavenly bodies (including the outermost

6 James Wilberding, Creeping Spatiality: The Location of Nous in PlotinusUniverse, Phronesis 50 (2005), 31534.

7 For the commentary on our passage see the edition of H. Diels in CAG vol. 10(Berlin: George Reimer, 1895), 13535, and for an English translation, R. McKirahan,Simplicius: On Aristotles Physics 8.610 (London: Duckworth, 2001).

8 Marwan Rashed, Alexandre dAphrodise, Commentaire perdu a` la Physique dAristote(Livres IVVIII) (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2011).

Yah: ya Ibn Ad on the Location of God 207

sphere) do not move: as a whole they never shift from their location, butrather rotate always in the same place.9 We quote here from } 821 inRasheds edition:

Since what is moved accidentally is in something that is in a place, and since it is apart of that, it can rightly be said to be moved accidentally. But what is outermost inthe heaven (e b K F PF) is not in a place,10 nor is the mover that isin it like a part of it; rather, it is [in it] as a substance in its own right ( P ), occupying the whole outer surface. Thus it does not move accidentally. Forthe outermost surface is, considered as a whole, unmoved.11

Notice, however, that Alexander is not identifying the location of theMover with the sphere as such. Rather, he holds that the Mover is in thesurface of the sphere (the scholium has Ke K, whereas Simpli-cius uses the less perspicuous term ).

Alexander furthermore stresses that the Mover is not in the surface theway a form is in a subject. In a preceding comment (} 818), we find:

One should not understand in something (e ) as in a placegiven that itwas proved to have no partsor as a form of that in which it resides ( YZ F K z K)for then it would be the soul and actuality of the potentialityof the first bodybut as a substance in a substance ( P K P ), immaterialin itself, and not as a form. For if the heaven is indeed ensouled and moves inaccordance with the soul in it, which is its form, still in addition to being moved inaccordance with the soul in it, it needs something else that provides it with aprinciple of motion, given that, for all ensouled things, there is something outsidethat is a cause and principle for them which produces motion in accordance withsoul, in respect of placeif indeed impulse and desire for something bring tofulfillment the motion of ensouled things in respect of place.12

But what does it mean to be in something as a substance is in a substance?Rashed has argued that Alexander sees the surface or limit of a body as

9 It is important for Alexanders refutation that the surface of the sphere is not,unlike the celestial equator, a part of the sphere, since the surface does not movewhereas the equator does. He must therefore be thinking of the equator as a physical partwhich actually rotates.

10 Again, because it has no containing body. For a collection of texts on the vexedquestion of whether the heaven has a place, see Richard Sorabji, The Philosophy of theCommentators, 200600 AD: A Sourcebook in Three Volumes (London: Duckworth,2004), vol. 2, } 13(b).

11 See Rashed, Alexandre dAphrodise, 6401; cf. Simpliciuss quotation at 1354.1225.

12 Rashed, Alexandre dAphrodise, 639; cf. Simplicius 1354.2534. Note that McKir-ahan, Simplicius, 144, mistranslates the key phrase in Simplicius which states that God isnot in anything as a form (he writes or as if there is a form in which it is instead of oras if it were a form of that in which it is).


being itself a kind of substance, insofar as it is a part of a substance. Thus agood comparison for the Movers relation to the sphere is the way a colorrelates to a colored body, albeit that a color is of course not a substance.This has the advantage that it excludes accidental motion from the Mover(just as when a blue body rotates, blue does not rotate).13 In the latter halfof the scholium, Alexander also makes clear why he is so resistant to thesuggestion that the Mover is in the sphere as a form: the sphere already has aform, namely its soul.14 To explain the spheres motion we need not only asoul, but also something outside which can serve as its final cause.

It is also worth touching on Simpliciuss own solution to the problem,since this will give us a third interpretation with which we can compare IbnAds. Simplicius finds Alexanders solution wanting:

1355.1528: Or is the contribution conceived by Alexander also insufficient toshow that it is not even moved accidentally, given that it [i.e. Alexanders contribu-tion] proceeds on the notion (K) that the first mover is in the heaven? For if,he says, it is not in a part of the periphery but in it as a whole, since the whole[periphery] does not move or change from its place, but remains in the same spot (KH PH), [the mover] would not move accidentally.15 If then [the periphery] as awhole does not move, but the first mover is said to be in that which is moved mostquickly, it is clear that it is not in the whole periphery. Furthermore, if it is in thewhole [periphery] in the sense that it is allocated ()16 to it, but thewhole [periphery] does move in respect of its parts, it is clear that it too will moveaccidentally in respect of the parts. But if it is present to () the wholewithout relation (I) and transcendently (K ), then what prevents(since it is present also to all the parts all at once, without relation, transcendently,without partition or motion) that it is not moved accidentally along with themotion of those [parts]? Eudemus firmly lays out the problem: If, he says, thefirst mover is without parts, and not in contact with the moved, how is it related to it(~ e P)? Therefore, how can that which is without parts and not in

13 Rashed, Alexandre dAphrodise, 1578.14 As Rashed, Alexandre dAphrodise, 640, notes, this hylomorphic aspect of Alexan-

ders discussion is quietly eliminated in the quotation by Simplicius.15 Diels and McKirahan both take the Alexander quotation to continue on for the

next three sentences, but it seems clear that Simpliciuss rival viewwhich introduces theNeoplatonic technical vocabulary of allocation, and the notion of unrelatedness, inreaction to Eudemuss formulation of the aporiabegins with the next sentence.

16 As we learn from Simpliciuss Categories commentary (at 53, 79) allocationmeans the immanence of a form in a particular. Simplicius is thus complaining thatGod should not relate to the sphere (or its surface) the way a form subsists in a particular.This is ironic given that Alexander had denied precisely this in respect of Gods relationto the sphere. On this vocabulary, which may go back to Porphyry, see e.g.R. Chiaradonna, Essence et predication chez Porphyre et Plotin, Revue des Sciencesphilosophiques et theologiques 82 (1998), 577606, at 5912.


contact with the moved, but is instead without relation to it and transcendent, bemoved along with the moved, so that it would be moved accidentally?

His critique invokes the same point stressed by Eudemus, namely thatAristotle uses fastest motion as a criterion for the Movers locationifthe sphere is immobile as a whole, Aristotle cannot possibly mean that theMover is in the whole sphere, or its surface. Simplicius prefers to solve thedifficulty by simply denying that the Mover is related to the sphere at all.It exists on a different, more transcendent level. Simpliciuss solution wouldcertainly show that the Mover does not move; whether it can give anysubstance to the idea that the Mover is in the circle is more doubtful.

2 . IBN ADI S INITIAL SOLUTION (} 1, 68)

As it happens one of the most valuable documents regarding the activitiesof the Baghdad school is devoted to the Physics. This is an Arabic translationinterspersed with comments by members of the school, including occasion-ally Ibn Ad himself.17 It also contains Arabic translations of otherwise lostcomments by John Philoponus18 and Alexander.19 This means that IbnAd would likely have known Alexanders discussion of VIII.10, thoughthis part of Alexanders commentary is not quoted in the Baghdad schoolsversion of the Physics. In the Arabic translation, the Aristotelian passagewith which we have been concerned reads as follows:

Necessarily, [the mover] must be either in the center or in the circle, because thesetwo are the principles. But the things closest to the mover have the quickest motion,and the motion of the universe is like this. So the mover is there.20

17 Abdurrahman Badaw (ed.), Arist:ut:alis: al-T: ab a, 2 vols, (Cairo: al-Dar al-Qaw-miyya li-l-T

iba a wa-l-Nashr,19645). The contents are summarized and discussed in

Paul Lettinck, Aristotles Physics and its Reception in the Arabic World (Leiden: Brill,1994).

18 Unfortunately these do not preserve remarks by Philoponus on our passage. For anEnglish translation of the Philoponus sections see Lettinck and J. O. Urmson (trans.),Philoponus On Aristotle Physics 58 with Simplicius On Aristotle on the Void (London:Duckworth, 1994); E. Giannakis, Philoponus in the Arabic Tradition of Aristotles Physics,D. Phil. Thesis (Oxford, 1992). See further E. Giannakis, The Structure of Abul-Husayn al-Bas:rs Copy of Aristotles Physics, Zeitschrift fur Geschichte der arabisch-

islamischen Wissenschaften 8 (1993), 2518.19 Elias Giannakis, Fragments from Alexanders lost Commentary on Aristotles

Physics, Zeitschrift fur Geschichte der arabisch-islamischen Wissenschaften 10 (1995/6),15787.

20 fa-qad yajibu d: aruratan an yakuna imma f-l-wasat:i wa-imma f-l-dairati wa-dhalika anna hadhayni huma al-mabdaani lakinna aqraba l-ashyai min al-muh: arriki


As we will see, Ibn Ads treatise is largely devoted to the meaning in thispassage of in (f, corresponding to Greek K). Perhaps surprisingly, hedoes not comment at all on hunaka, corresponding to Greek KE. In factthe little treatise begins from a rather loose reminiscence of our passage,rather than a strict translation: the mover is in the container (al-muh: arrikf-l-muh: t:). Ibn Ad clarifies that here the mover means the Creator(al-bari ), while the container refers to the celestial sphere (al-falak)presumably meaning only the outermost sphere. Thus, the challenge is toexplain how the Creator is in the outermost sphere.

It should be noticed that Ibn Ad does not directly address the possibil-ity that God is in something other than the sphere itselfthat is, in thecelestial equator, as Eudemus argued, or the surface, as Alexander argued.However, we will see later on that Ibn Ad was apparently aware of thesediscussions. His own solution is quite different:

} 1: [God] is only in [the sphere] in the way that the object of intellection (al-maqul ) is in the subject of intellection (al-aqil ), so that it not be the case thatHe is in it in His own right.

An ambiguity arises in the final clause, which in the manuscript reads alla/illa annahu bi-dhatih f-hi. This clearly cannot be read as illa annahu bi-dhatih f-hi and understood as except that He is in it [the sphere] in Hisown right, because a good portion of the treatise is going to deny that GodHimself is in the sphere. If we wish to retain the illa, we could understandthe pronouns differently: except that it [the object of intellection] is in it[the subject of intellection] essentially, the point being that by contrast,God is not in the sphere essentially.21 This would be reasonable if Ibn Admeant an object of intellect as suchthat is, the intelligible in my mindrather than the mind-independent entity which I am knowing. But onbalance, it seems more economical to read the first word of the clause asalla, and to understand the pronouns as referring to God and the sphere:God must be in the sphere the way that an object of intellection is inthe subject of intellection, so as to avoid the claim that God, Himself, isliterally in the sphere.22

asrauha h: arakatan wa-ka-dhalika h: arakatu l-kulli fa-l-muh: arriku idhan hunaka:Badaw, Arist:ut:alis: al-T:ab a II: 932.1013.

21 A version of this reading has been suggested to us by Stephen Menn: it could mean,unless [one were willing to say that] the object of intellection is in the subject ofintellection, which would be a controversial claim.

22 Another alternative would be to emend alla/illa to la, which would give a similarsense to alla: God is in the sphere the way that an object of intellection is in thesubject of intellection: that is, not in the sense that He Himself is in it. Cf. Ibn AdsEssay on the Four Scientific Questions regarding the Three Categories of Existence: Divine,


The solution is reprised below, after a clarificatory passage (}} 25)which we will examine shortly:

}} 68: The objects of knowledge exist in the knower. For the heavenly bodies knowtheir mover, given that they are moved only out of their desire to receive Him, justas Aristotle says: the first mover moves them only as the object of desire moves whatdesires it. This can only happen with things that possess intellects.

This argument looks to go as follows:

(a) The heavens move out of desire for God.(b) What moves out of desire has its object of desire as an intelligible.(c) Therefore the heavens have God as an intelligible.(d) Corollary: the heavens have intellects.

We are not yet told why the conclusion (c) should entail that God is inthe sphere; this will be explained only at the end of the treatise (} 28).Leaving that aside, the passage seems to be relatively uncontentious, withthe exception of premise (b). This premise seems to neglect the possibilitythat something could move out of desire for something else without using,or even having, an intellective capacity. Yet irrational animals lack intellectsand manage to conceive and act on desires. Perhaps he is thinking thatstrictly speaking animals do not engage in action, since they lack practicalintellect. Ibn Ad in any case surely has in mind the passage where Aristotlehimself identifies the objects of desire and of thought, in his discussion ofthe Prime Mover in the Metaphysics (XII.7, 1072a267).

3 . CLARIFICATIONS (}} 25)

In between these two statements of his solution, Ibn Ad clarifies a pair ofexpressions used by the philosophers (al-h: ukama, i.e. Aristotle andhis commentators). First, he remarks on the meaning of the term vessel(al-ina ). Presumably this is relevant to the characterization of the outer-most sphere as a containing [sphere] (muh: t:). Ibn Ad here quotesAristotles definition of vessel (o` IE) as a transportable place

Natural and Logical, ed. and trans. Menn and Wisnovsky, } 12, 66a1114, a passagecopied in Maqalat al-shaykh Yah: ya ibn Ad f wujub [alt. wujud ] al-taannus, ed. andtrans. Augustin Perier as Traite de Yah: ya ben Ad sur le mode de lIncarnation, inPetits traites apologetiques de Yah: ya ben Ad (Texte arabe) (Paris: Geuthner, 1920), 6986at 75.776.8. Here Ibn Ad says that it would be manifestly absurd to claim that when aknower knows what human is, the thing that comes to be (h: adatha) in the mind of theknower is the actual formmatter composite of a concrete individual human, completewith its matter and its body.


(Physics IV.2, 209b29: ). Second, he discusses thedescription of heavenly motion as the single, continuous motion of amagnitude. This remark is provoked by the application of these terms tothe heavenly motion in the same final chapter of the Physics we arecommenting on (, B, , at VIII.10, 267a212).

In both cases, Ibn Ad wants to explain that these characterizations arenot essential, but are ascribed on the basis of the existence of something[else] in it (min jihati wujudi bad: i ma huwa fhi) (} 3). Thus a vessel is nota moving place essentially or in its own right, but only because somethingis contained (or perhaps, could be contained) within its inner surface (} 4).Likewise the heavenly motion is not continuous in its own right. Rather,the motions continuity is derived from the continuity of the heavenly body(} 4). Nor is this continuity of magnitude essential, but rather derived inturn from the continuity of the heavenly bodys parts (} 5). The point ofthis is that a single heavenly sphere is not continuousin the sense ofcontiguouswith anything else, since as a sphere, it has no edges that arein contact with another body. It can be called continuous only insofar asits own parts are touching one another (e.g. its top hemisphere would betouching its bottom hemisphere). Here one might worry that a nestedheavenly sphere will in fact be touching both the sphere inside it and thesphere outside it. But he has just pointed out that this sort of contact, whichis characteristic of a vessel, is also accidental. Finally, according to Ibn Ad,the heavens do not even move essentially. This rather surprising claim isexplained with the remark that they are said to move only in view of themotion of their parts (} 4). This is an unmistakable reminiscence ofAlexanders point that, whereas the parts of the sphere move in the dailyrotation, the sphere as a whole does not move from where it is. Thedifference is that whereas Alexander wanted to show that the Mover isnot moved even accidentally, Ibn Ad is using the same rationale to say thatthe celestial sphere is moved accidentally, just not essentially.

Further light on this is shed by a comment found in the Baghdad Physics.The lemma is Phys IV.3, 210b1821, where Aristotle argued that a thingcannot be in itself. In the comment, a member of the Baghdad school, Ibnal-Samh: , provides examples to illustrate a point made by Philoponus:

Aristotle is showing that nothing can be in itself (f dhatih ) either essentially (bi-l-dhat) or accidentally. Clearly nothing can be in itself in a primary sense (ala-l-qas:dal-awwal ), but only in a secondary sense.23 The essential case [of something being

23 Cf. Greek vs. at Philoponus, in Phys. 530, rendered using thefirst and second intention terminology familiar from Porphyry (cf. atPorphyry, Isag., ed. Busse, 17.9) and used in the Baghdad school, e.g. by al-Farab in his


in itself] is, for instance, that Zayd is seeing himself, but in a secondary sense, andonly because the seeing part of him is seeing in the primary sense. Or, Zayd isknowing himself, but only in a secondary sense, and only because of that whichis knowing in a primary sense, that is, through his soul. In general, whatever istransferred from a part of something to the whole of that thing belongs to the wholein a secondary sense, and what is not transferred to it from its part belongs to it in aprimary sense. The essential case is the opposite of the accidental case. Theaccidental case [of something being in itself] is when two accidents occur in asingle subject, such that one of them is said of the other then [one accident] is saidof [the other accident] accidentally.24

As we just saw, Ibn Ad makes a similar point regarding heavenly motion:the parts of the sphere are in motion, but the whole is not, so we speak ofthe sphere as moving only by transferring from the part to the whole.However, Ibn Ad does not adhere to the terminology used here in theBaghdad Physics. For Philoponus and Ibn al-Samh: , the primary/secondarydistinction is made within essential attributes, while accidental is reservedfor coinciding features in the same subject:

Essential features: as a whole (primary)transferred from a part (secondary)

Accidental features: coincidence of properties

In Ibn Ad, by contrast, the features transferred from a part are simplylabeled accidental, with essential reserved for features possessed as awhole. We may conclude from this that he agrees with Alexanders analysis,despite the variation in terminology.

4 . ONE CONTRARY IS ENOUGH

After these clarifications and the restatement of his view at }} 68, Ibn Adquotes a passage from Physics book I, without giving us any clue how thequotation might be relevant to the topic at hand (} 9). In the passagequoted (191a37), Aristotle writes: it is clear that something must under-lie the contraries, and that the contraries are two. But in another way this is

commentary on On Interpretation (see W. Kutsch and S. Marrow Alfarabis Commentaryon Aristotles Peri Hermeneias (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1960), 105 and 2067,and for a translation F. W. Zimmermann, Al-Farabis Commentary and Short Treatise onAristotles De Interpretatione (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 100 and 200).More generally on these terms see Kwame Gyekye, The Terms Prima intentio andSecunda intentio in Arabic Logic, Speculum 46 (1971), 3248.

24 Badaw, Arist:ut:alis: al-T:ab a I: 299.1826, cf. Lettinck, Aristotles Physics and itsReception, 278.


not necessary, for one of the contraries will be sufficient for the change byits absence or presence. Ibn Ads version of the quotation is not identicalto the translation in the Baghdad Physics, although both render the Aristo-telian text accurately. (For instance, when Aristotle writes in another waythis is not necessary [ P IE], Ibn Ad haswajh for and fa-laysa dhalika bi-wujub for P IE, whereasthe Baghdad Physics has respectively nah: iya and laysa hadha bi-d: arur.)Following the quotation Ibn Ad adds, So [just] one of the two contrariesis characterized as acting. The agent [acts] simply by virtue of what has beenmentioned: its existence or lack (} 10). Apart from supplying the syno-nyms existence and lack (wujud, faqd ) for absence and presence(ghayba, h: ud: ur),25 the main contribution of this gloss seems to beidentifying the efficacious contrary as an agent or efficient cause (fa il ).

That may be a clue to what this little passage is doing here, in the midstof a discussion of Gods relationship to the outermost spherethough onecannot exclude that the passage has found its way into the text erroneously.If it does belong here, Ibn Ad is presumably trying to safeguard Godsstatus as a causal principle. He might be imagining a potential objection,along the following lines: Aristotle says in Physics I that causation alwaysinvolves two contraries operating on a subject. This is how change ormotion is brought about. But God has no contrary, so He cannot beinvolved in the production of change or motion. Since Ibn Ad has justexplained how God causes motion (}} 68), such an objection would makesense here. The response would then be to say that there does not need to bethe possibility of a contrary to God; it is enough that God is present for Himto be causally efficacious. The gloss Ibn Ad provides on the quotationwould then have the further implication that God is here being seen as anefficient cause, and not just a final cause or object of desire, as could havebeen inferred from } 7, where he has written the first mover moves themjust in the way (innama) that the object of desire moves what desires it.This translation of innama (also used in } 27) seems preferable to renderingit as only. It is hard to believe that Ibn Ad wants to exclude that God isan efficient cause;26 and as weve just seen he may be implying precisely that

25 Commentary by means of synonymous paraphrase is standard exegetical practicefor Ibn Ad. It is highly characteristic, for instance, of his surviving commentary onMetaphysics Book . On this text see Peter Adamson, Yah: ya Ibn Ad and Averroes onMetaphysics Alpha Elatton, Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 21(2010), 34374; C. Martini Bonadeo, Un commento ad alpha elatton sicut litteraesonant nella Baghdad del X secolo, Medioevo 28 (2003), 6996.

26 See for instance his treatise On Unity (ed. in Khalfat, Maqalat Yah: ya ibn Ad,375404), in which he describes Gods generosity (jud ) and power (qudra) in creatingthings, that is, voluntarily giving them existence after they did not exist (399403).


God is such a cause at } 10. He makes no attempt in the present treatise toexplain this in detail, and in particular to explain how God could be anefficient cause for the motion of the sphere without having some kind ofspatial relation to it.

5 . IS GOD IN THE CIRCLE IN HIS OWN RIGHT?

Ibn Ad now takes up the point that seems to concern him most: denyingthat God is existing in the circle in His own right (bi-dhatihi ). He hastwo worries about this claim. The first is the use of the word circle(da ira), which of course is present in the Aristotelian passage itself. Heconsiders two possibilities: first, one might be using the word circle torefer to the celestial sphere, but that is dismissed on the basis that the sphereis ball-shaped and not only a circle (} 11). Alternatively, Aristotle is using ananalogy: one can call a sphere a circle because it relates to three-dimen-sional shapes the way the circle relates to two-dimensional shapes (} 12).Although Ibn Ad does not seem particularly enthusiastic about thisproposal, he does not suggest anything better, and it is clear from whatfollows that he agrees Aristotle is talking about Gods being in the celestialsphere and not in a circle. This passage may seem rather pedantic, but ittakes on more significance in light of the material we examined in theGreek tradition.27 By rejecting the talk of a circle as either misleading ormetaphorical, Ibn Ad has sided with Alexander against Eudemus, whotook Aristotle to be speaking of the celestial equator. On the other hand, aswe saw, Alexander said that the Prime Mover is in the surface of the sphere,rather than the sphere itself, and Ibn Ad makes no allusion to this idea (hementions surfaces [sut:uh: ] at } 12, but this is only a way of referring totwo-dimensional figures in general).

Next, he comes on to the more significant question of whether God isin the sphere in His own right. He denies this, by means of an exhaustivediscussion of all the meanings of the word in. Unsurprisingly, heavails himself of Aristotles own discussion of the senses of K earlier inthe Physics (IV.3). However his list of meanings does not conform exactly toAristotles:

God is characterized as a Creator and agent throughout his treatise on the kalam notion ofacquisition; see Shlomo Pines andMichael Schwarz, Yah: ya Ibn Ads Refutation of theDoctrine of Acquisition (Iktisab), in J. Blau et al. (eds.), Studia Orientalia MemoriaeD. H. Baneth Dedicata (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1979), 4994.

27 Our thanks to Marwan Rashed for discussion of this point.


Aside from some re-ordering, Ibn Ad seems to have added three senses(4, 9, and 10) and to have split up Aristotles sense 8 into two entries.

It turns out that this gives us strong evidence that Ibn Ad is usingmaterial from the Greek commentators. In a passage preserved in theBaghdad Physics, Philoponus notes in a comment on Physics 210a14 thatAristotle has missed out two senses of K, namely Ibn Ads senses 4 and 8:being in a time, and being in a subject (e K d e K).28 Ibn Ad has apparently understood the latter to refer to therelation between an accident and a substance; thus he speaks of jawharrather than mawd: u (} 23). Philoponus also points out that Aristotles sense8 could be disambiguated into two distinct meanings: in place and in avessel,29 which explains why Ibn Ad distinguishes senses 5 and 11. Thatleaves us with sense 10: a substance can be said to be in an accident. Thiscorresponds to a passage found in the Baghdad Physics which preserves aremark by Alexander: Another sense is the existence30 of one thing inanother in the sense of the existence of a subject (al-mawd: u ) in somethingelse, as when Socrates is in good (al-khayr).31 Notice that Ibn Ad againmakes the same variation from subject (mawd: u ) to substance (jawhar)(} 24).

This gives us a grand total of 11 senses of in (f ), and Ibn Ad shows(}} 1325) that God is not in the sphere in any of these senses. Although

Aristotle Ibn Ad

1 Part in whole 1 Genus in species2 Whole in part 2 Whole in part3 Species in genus 3 Part in whole4 Genus in species 4 Thing in time5 Form in matter 5 Thing in place6 Deed in agent 6 Deed in agent7 Thing in its goal 7 Thing in its goal8 Thing in place/vessel 8 Form in subject

9 Accident in substance10 Substance in accident11 Thing in a vessel

28 Philoponus, In Phys., ed. Vitelli, 526.31527.1, cf. Badaw, Arist:ut:alis: al-T:ab aI: 298 (f l-zaman, f l-mawd: u ), and Vitelli 529.1617, cf. Badaw, Arist:ut:alis: al-T:ab aI: 299.1314.

29 Philoponus, In Phys., ed. Vitelli, 529.13.30 Here we need to read wujud for jud in Badaws edition.31 Badaw, Arist:ut:alis: al-T:ab a I: 298.


this discussion is bracketed at both ends by passages which deny that God isin the sphere in His own right (}} 11, 26), the arguments provided by IbnAd show something stronger, which is that God is not in the sphere inany sense at all. At this point, we begin to realize why Ibn Ad took thetrouble to comment on our passage from the Physics: when Aristotle saysthat the Prime Mover is in the circle, Ibn Ad not only thinks we needto replace circle with sphere, he also wants to take in to describe arelation that is not, strictly speaking, a possible meaning of the word in!His arguments against the appropriateness of the various senses of in arein most cases perfunctory: e.g. God cannot be in the sphere the waysomething is in time, because the sphere is not time (} 19). One mightbe surprised that he is equally casual about the question of whether God isin the sphere as in a place or a vessel (}} 20, 25), given the attention he haspaid to Aristotles definition of a vessel as a place earlier on (}} 2, 4). Heseems to assume that the outermost celestial sphere is a vessel for thecontained, inner spheres, but not for God. This is reasonable enough, yethe is remarkably insouciant about the prospect of Gods having a literalplace, given the difficulties that this notion provoked in the Greek trad-ition. For Ibn Ad, though, Gods immateriality obviously rules out Hishaving a place, so there is no need for detailed discussion.

More substantial are his arguments against Gods being in the sphere as agenus in a species, as a whole in a part, or as a part in a whole (senses 1, 2,and 3). The idea that God has no genus is a familiar one in the Arabicphilosophical tradition.32 Ibn Ad argues instead that God is not a genus,or at least, not related to the sphere as a genus relates to the species. Thishardly seems to require refutationhe might have said simply that thesphere is not a species and leave it at that, much as he will do with the caseof being in time. Instead, he invokes a criterion derived from AristotlesCategories: if A is the genus of B, then A gives B its name and definition(} 13, cf. Cat. 5, 2a201). In the next sentence, he calls again on thispremise but drops the reference to name. So it seems that it is the definitionof God that is relevant herewhich seems to presuppose that God is the sortof thing that can be defined. But all that Ibn Ad needs here is the point thatif God were the genus of the sphere then the sphere would have all Hischaracteristics (s:ifat). One of Gods characteristics is to be incorporeal, but

32 See for instance al-Kind, On First Philosophy, in P. Adamson and P. E. Pormann(trs.), The Philosophical Works of al-Kind (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2012),} XIX.1; Avicenna, The Metaphysics of the Healing, tr. M. E. Marmura (Provo: BrighamYoung University Press, 2005), VIII.4.14.


the sphere is a body (jism), which gives Ibn Ad his desired conclusion.Given that, as already pointed out, Ibn Ad could have reached theconclusion even more easily, it seems likely that this argument has beenchosen in order to draw our attention to Gods incorporeality. As we saw,the immateriality of the Prime Mover played a prominent role in the Greekdiscussion of the passage at hand (e.g. Alexander, } 818).

Ibn Ads most complicated arguments regarding the senses of in aredevoted to the next two possibilities: that God is in the sphere as a whole ora part. Again, the Greek tradition of commentary may help explain this.Alexander worried that if, as Eudemus suggested, the Mover were in a partof the sphere (namely the celestial equator), then it would be movedaccidentally along with the sphere. Of course there is a difference betweenbeing in a part of the sphere and being a part of the sphere, and it is thelatter that is considered here by Ibn Ad. Nonetheless, a version ofAlexanders worry that God would be moved by the sphere becomesdecisive in Ibn Ads discussion, which revolves around the claim thatGod cannot be causally dependent on the sphere.

He begins with a familiar distinction between homoiomerous (mutasha-bih al-ajza ) and anhomoiomerous wholes, that is, wholes whose parts areuniform (e.g. flesh and bone) and those whose parts are non-uniform, i.e.discrete entities (e.g. the heart and the liver).33 Against the possibility thatGod is like a homoiomerous whole, Ibn Ad repeats that God does notshare a definition with the sphere, whereas such wholes do share adefinition with their parts. Again, this need mean only that such a wholewill have its characteristics in common with its parts; for instance each partof a body of water will be wet. Next, against the prospect of God as ananhomoiomerous whole, we get the following argument:

} 16: The whole needs its parts for its existence, whereas [the first mover] has noneed of anything [else] for its existence, since it [sc. the first mover] is a cause of it[sc. that other thing]. If anything needs something [else] for its own existence, thenthat thing it needs for its existence is a cause of it.

This argument, of course, would also rule out the first alternative that Godis a homoiomerous whole.

33 For the distinction see Aristotle, Parts of Animals I.1, 640b1920, Generation ofAnimals I.1, 715a10. For a strikingly similar discussion see al-Kinds That There areSeparate Substances, tr. Adamson and Pormann, 10710. This brief treatise not onlyapplies the distinctions between types of whole to the speciesparticular relation, but alsoinvokes the name and definition test from the Categories.


But how do we know that God does not need the sphere for its existence?The premise is fairly uncontroversial, perhaps, but Ibn Ad gives a ration-ale for it anyway, namely that God is the spheres cause. When he uses thesame point to argue that God is not a part of the sphere, he elaborates onthis rationale:

} 18: If it were the case that [the first mover] existed as belonging to (li-) the sphereand in it, then it would be wrong [to say] that the sphere desires it, since it is wrong[to say] that anything desires something that exists as belonging to it.

The point here is simply that the sphere could not desire the first mover if italready possessed the mover but we know that God causes the sphere tomove precisely because the sphere desires Him, as recalled at }7.34

6. CONCLUSION

Having ruled out the application of all 11 senses of in to the relationbetween God and the sphere, Ibn Ad is ready to conclude that the cause[sc. the Mover] does not exist in the container [sc. the sphere] in [its] ownright (bi-l-dhat) (} 26). As has already been noted, the phrase in its ownright, which has been absent from all the arguments regarding the senses ofin, now reappears in the conclusion.

We were already told (}} 67), and are now told again (}} 278), thatGod moves the sphere as a final cause, which means that He is an intelli-gible object for the spheres intellect. Ibn Ad now adds something signifi-cant: the reality (h: aqqa) of the subject of intellection is that the image(mithal ) of the object of intellection is in it (} 28). Applying this to thecase of God, this means that God is not in the sphere after all. Rather, animage of God is present in the spheres intellect. It may well be that IbnAd went on to spell this out explicitly in a final sentence, which has beencut off in the manuscript (see our note in the translation ad loc). The upshotis that, of the three positions we considered from the Greek tradition, theview of Simplicius is closest to anticipating Ibn Ads: God transcends thesphere and so is not in it, even in the rather extended senses of inrecognized by Eudemus and Alexander.

This leaves us with a final question: given that Ibn Ad seems tohave known Alexanders Physics commentary, why might he have rejected

34 Our thanks to Stephen Menn for discussion of this passage.


Alexanders view that God is in the sphere as a substance in a substance?The answer may lie with Ibn Ads theological commitments as a mono-physite Christian.35 Broadly speaking, he may have resisted the idea thatGod is specifically in the sphere, as opposed to equally omnipresent in allparts of the cosmos.36 Furthermore, as we know from the apologetic workswritten by Ibn Ad, he energetically attacked Nestorian conceptions of theIncarnation, which saw Christ as having two separate natures and twohypostaseis, divine and human.37 In a refutation of the Nestorians, IbnAd describes their position precisely as the view that Christ consists oftwo substances (jawharan)38 which are united only by will. It may be thatIbn Ad saw Alexanders account of Gods presence in the sphere asuncomfortably close to the Nestorian account of how God is present toChrists humanity. This would have been reason enough for him todistance himself from Alexanders interpretation, leaving him with thedeflationary conclusion that God is in the sphere only in the sense thatone can have something in mind.

Ludwig-Maximilians University MunichMcGill University

Translation

COMMENTARY ON BOOK EIGHT

OF ARISTOTLES PHYSICS

(1) He said: If someone asks, what is the meaning of Aristotles assertion,in Book Eight of the Physics, that the mover is in the containing[sphere] (al-muh: arrik f-l-muh: t:),39 let him know that he [Aristotle]means that the mover (and by mover he refers to the Creator,

35 Again, our thanks to Marwan Rashed for suggesting this line of thought. For thisside of Ibn Ads thought see Emilio Platti, Yah: ya Ibn Ad: Theologien chretien etphilosophe arabe (Leuven: Departement Orientalistiek, 1983).

36 Our thanks to the anonymous referee for this point.37 Cf. Yah: yas Christological work Maqalat al-shaykh Yah: ya ibn Ad f wujub [alt.

wujud ] al-taannus, ed. and trans. Perier, Petits traites. A significant portion of this work(Perier, 75.782.3) overlaps with the newly discovered philosophical treatise by Yah: yaentitled Essay on the Four Scientific Questions regarding the Three Categories of Existence:Divine, Natural and Logical (ed. and trs. Menn and Wisnovsky, Yah: ya ibn Ads,n. 4).

38 See Platti, Yah: ya Ibn Ad, *64, tr. at 190.39 The reference is to Physics VIII.10, 267b69.


exalted be His praise, and by containing, he refers to the celestialsphere) is only in it in the way that the object of intellection(al-maqul ) is in the subject of intellection (al-aqil ), so that it notbe the case that He is in it in His own right.

(2) The proof (dall ) of this is that it is something widely acknowledgedthat philosophers (al-h: ukama ) have used the expression vessel(al-ina ) in the sense of a place which moves,40 and used theexpression motion [of the sphere] in the sense of [something]single and uniform, and used the expression heavenly orbs in thesense of [something] moved.

(3) But they used each one of these [expressions] to describe what isdescribed by it not with respect to its essence, but with respect to theexistence of something in it (min jihati wujudi bad: i ma huwa fhi ), towhich this attribute may truly be applied.

(4) The vessel is not a place essentially, but in view of its inner concavesurface; and the single motion is not essentially continuous, but [iscontinuous] in view of the magnitude to which [the motion] applies;and moving is correctly said to apply to the heavenly orbs notessentially, but in view of the motion of their parts.

(5) Again, the magnitude is said to be continuous not essentially, but inview of the continuity of its partsone may only speak of continuitybetween at least two things, no matter how small they are, for a singlething is not rightly called continuous.

(6) As for what Aristotle the philosopher says at the end of PhysicsBook Eight, that the mover is in the containing [sphere], this is correctjust in the sense that the objects of knowledge exist in the knower.

(7) For the heavenly bodies know their mover, given that they are movedonly out of their desire (ishtiyaq) to receive Him, just as Aristotle says:the first mover moves them just in the way that the object of desiremoves what desires it.

(8) This can only happen with things that possess intellects.(9) Aristotle said in the Book One of the Physics that the contraries are

two. But from another point of view this need not be the case, becauseone of two contraries may suffice to bring about change by its presenceor absence.41

40 A quote from Physics IV.2, 209b29: .41 Phys I.7, 191a37.


(10) So [just] one of the two contraries is characterized as acting. The agent[acts] simply by virtue of what has been mentioned: its existence orlack.

(11) Furthermore, it is not correct for the first mover to be characterized asexisting, in its own right, in the circle (f-l-da ira). This is because itmust either be said, in speaking of circle, to refer to the highestcircular sphere (and this is false, in view of the fact that the sphere isan orb [al-falak kura], not a circle), or

(12) be said that he [Aristotle] is deeming it permissible to call the sphere acircle in view of the fact that its status in respect of bodily things is thestatus of the circle in respect of planes (sut:uh: ) (if the person whoasserts this is indulged in positing this facile [explanation], in view ofwhat it entails).

(13) Clearly, it is not correct [to say] that [the mover] is in [the outermostsphere] the way that the genus is in the species. This is because thegenus gives its name and its definition to its species,42 whereas the firstcause gives the celestial sphere neither its name43 nor its definition,since one of its characteristics is not-to-be-a-body, and the celestialsphere is a body.

(14) Nor is it correct [to say] that it is in it the way the whole is in its parts.(15) It is not like a homoiomerous whole, in view of the fact that its

definition and the definition of sphere are not one and the same.(16) Nor is it like an anhomoiomerous whole, in view of the fact that the

whole needs its parts for its existence, whereas [the first mover] has noneed of anything [else] for its existence, since it [sc. the first mover] isa cause of it [sc. that other thing]. If anything needs something [else]for its own existence, then that thing it needs for its existence is a causeof it.

(17) From this [sc. the supposition that it is a whole of heterogeneous(anhomoiomerous) parts] would follow that [the first mover both] hasno cause and has a cause, and this is absurd.

(18) Nor is it correct [to say] that [it is in it] the way a part is in its whole.For if this were the case, and the part, without exception, necessarilyexisted whenever44 the whole existed, and if it were the case that [thefirst mover] existed as belonging to (li-) the sphere and in it, then itwould be wrong [to say] that the sphere desires it, since it is wrong [tosay] that anything desires something that exists as belonging to it.

42 Cf. Categories 5, 2a201.43 The marginal correction in the ms is right to emend ashhar to ismahu.44 Reading idha; the ms. has idhan.


(19) Nor is it correct [to say] that [it is in it] the way something is in time.For the sphere is not time.

(20) Nor is it correct [to say] that [it is in it] the way something that has aplace is in place. For [the first mover] is not a body, whereas every-thing that has a place is a body.

(21) Nor is it correct [to say] that [it is in it] the way what is acted upon isin the agent, or the way what has an end (ghaya) is in the end. Forthese are both causes, but [the first mover] has no cause.

(22) Nor is it correct [to say] that [it is in it] the way a form is in a subject.For the subject is a cause of the existence of the form, but [the firstmover] has no cause.

(23) Nor is it correct [to say] that [it is in it] the way an accident is in asubstance. For [the prime mover] is not an accident.

(24) Nor is it correct [to say] that [it is in it] the way a substance is in anaccident. For the sphere is not an accident.45

(25) Again, it is wrong [to say] that [it is in it] the way something is in avessel. For it is not a body, but whatever exists in a vessel is a body,because what is in a vessel is in the vessel as something that has a placeis in a place.46

(26) Thus it has been shown that it is not correct to say that the [first] causeis in the containing [sphere] in any of the ways that a thing may besaid to exist in its own right in another thing. Thus it has been shownthat the cause does not exist, in its own right, in the containing[sphere].

(27) Since this is so, it has been shown that what is moved (namely, theheavenly body) is moved by the first cause just in the way the desiringthing is moved by the desideratum.

(28) And this, without doubt, necessitates that it [the heavenly body] isthinking about the first cause, and the reality of the subject ofintellection is that the image of the object of intellection is in it. Soit is thus plain and evident that the existence [of the Mover in thecontaining [sphere] is only like the existence of the object of intellec-tion in the subject of intellection].47

45 Following this the ms has two crossed-out words: idh kana; the deletion is correct.46 Cf. } 20 above.47 We assume that several words have fallen out after the word wujud, and that these

would simply have spelled out the implication of the preceding sentence. A possible textis suggested in angle brackets in our Arabic edition of the text.


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